THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SELF

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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SELF Oak Ridge Forum
on Religion and Science Thursday, March 24, 2005
Neil Greenberg Department of Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology University of Tennessee
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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SELF Oak Ridge Forum
on Religion and Science Thursday, March 24, 2005
Neil Greenberg Department of Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology University of Tennessee
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Who the Hell Do You Think You Are!?

• Are you nothing more than a squirming mass of
  memories enveloped by an ego boundary?
• At some level, we seem to know that what we call
  matter, as the physicist David Bohm once
  observed, is just a ripple on the ocean of
  reality.

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The Natural History of the Self"

• But alongside our insignificance, we have the
  sentiment that we are largethat we contain
  multitudes, as the poet Walt Whitman so famously
  said.
• Part of the resolution of this seeming paradox is
  that humans are part of one another. To be a
  part of the main, as the poet John Donne put it,
  is among the hallmarks of the mystical
  experience.

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The Natural History of the Self"

• But mystical experiences are transformative!
• Sorry, Im not myself. I just had a mystical
  experience
• MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES are not only Ineffable, but
  Noetic, Transient, and Passive
• they may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary
  operations, like meditation, but once it begins
  it seems out of ones control as if he or she
  were grasped and held by a superior power
• William James 1918

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There are moments, and it is only a matter of
five or six seconds, when you feel the presence
of the eternal harmony ... a terrible thing is
the frightful clearness with which it manifests
itself, and the rapture with which it fills
you. Dostoyevski
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WHAT are our NEEDS?
Why do we need to know our selves?

• Health? Safety? Belonging? Prestige?
  Self-Actualization? (Maslow)
• For many of us, once other needs are met (or
  rendered irrelevant), to become one with the
  truth you seek is a key need. Attaining truth
  can be a peak experience, and one that can, in
  part, be facilitated or enhanced by an
  understanding of the proximate (physiological)
  and ultimate (evolutionary) aspects of its
  natural history.

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The Natural History of the Self"

• DEEP ETHOLOGY the convergence of complementary
  perspectives Development, Ecology, Evolution,
  and Physiology
• The evolutionary significance of KNOWING ONES
  SELF
• The LIMITS of KNOWLEDGE (the world is more
  continuous than our fragmentary knowledge of it)
• The SELF as concerned with CAUSES and
  CONSEQUENCES (history and future)
• TRUTH the convergence of correspondence and
  coherence (expressions of the way the brain is
  organized)

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At this point, to more fully understand the
relationship between humanity and nature, we can
invoke the powerfully integrative perspective of
DEEP ETHOLOGY
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DEEP ETHOLOGY

• Description
• Development
• Ecology
• Evolution
• Physiology

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SELF CONSCIOUSNESS

• "Before the connection of thought and brain can
  be explained, it must be stated in elementary
  form and there are great difficulties about
  stating it. . . . Many would find relief at this
  point in celebrating the mystery of the
  unknowable and the "awe" which we should feel. .
  . .
• It may be constitutional infirmity, but I can
  take no comfort in such devices for making a
  luxury of intellectual defeat. . . . Better live
  on the ragged edge, better gnaw the file
  forever!"
• (William James 1950177-199)

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DEEP ETHOLOGY

• Description
• We need to have consensus about the phenomenon
• Describing preceding and correlated phenomena
  nibbles at causation, but
• Post hoc ergo propter hoc
• if you cant explain something, describe the
  hell out of it

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CAN the SELF be DESCRIBED?

• there are multiple attributes of SELF including
  competing attributes any one of which can
  dominate.
• These ordinarily converge in varying proportion
  on what we recognize as who we are.
• As in other aspects of behavior, each of these
  has a distinctive development, context,
  evolutionary history and mechanism of expression.

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Distributed but integrated systems for
motivation, affect, and cognition, mediate
behavioral patterns from reflex to reflection

• Homeostatic functions and archaic reflexes of
  motivation are
• energized by the systems of affect and
• modulated by more recent systems employing
  cognition
• The ensemble represents the self as well as the
  outside world.

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SO WHAT IS THE SELF

• A graded integration of nested cognitive
  abilities that yield a more-or-less unified sense
  of who we are.
• In James view, the self consists of
• The material Self
• The social Self
• The spiritual Self

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SO WHAT IS THE SELF

• internal self call it centripetal, in which
  ones deepest core values are borne, nurtured,
  reside, and provide an overarching personality
• external self call it centrifugal, in which
  the boundaries of ones competencies are defined
  and extend out to influence those around us.
  This is extrasomatory self, those external
  expressions of inner meaning that are initially
  manifest as we test, explore, and exercise our
  competencies
• . . . as in reafference (feedback that
  fine-tunes our intended actions)
• . . . supremely manifest as art.

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DEEP ETHOLOGY

• Development
• Progressive change within an individual
• Epigenesis genes affect and are affected by the
  environment

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The scientist in the crib

• we were all scientists in the crib developing
  and testing hypotheses about the nature of our
  environments and how best to control them, how
  best to relate to one another.
• Like scientists, rejecting hypotheses that are
  false
• It is a necessary stage of our cognitive
  development. It is the phenomenon of mind that
  ultimately makes learning possible . . . and it
  is the beating heart of the scientific method.

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DEEP ETHOLOGY

• Ecology
• Context geology, climate
• Context conspecifics, predators, prey
• Presents challenges (selection pressures) to
  individuals or groups with which they must cope
  to maximize their fitness

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DEEP ETHOLOGY

• Evolution
• Ultimate Causation (why?)
• Transmission of information between the
  generations
• Progressive change

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DEEP ETHOLOGY

• Evolution
• Bricolage (the pandas thumb)
• pleiotropy (collateral effects, epiphenomena)
• adaptive traits meet needs

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Bricolage using whats available minute
phenomena can be dramatically transformed e.g.,
from thermoregulatory reflex to social display

• feathers raised by pilomotor muscles
• an ancient autonomic theromregulatory mechanism
• ordinarily hidden
• displayed when aroused

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The Lizards Flag

• Erected by the hyoid apparatus
• an ancient mechanism activated by stress
• ordinarily hidden
• displayed when aroused

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MEETING NEEDS

• Maslows need hierarchy
• Physiology (homeostasis, health)
• Safety (security, order, protection)
• Belonging ( sociability, acceptance, love)
• Esteem (status, prestige, acknowledgment)
• Self-Actualization (personal fulfillment)

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MEETING NEEDS

• ALL our biological adaptations have been
  preserved by natural selection because of their
  ability to help us meet our needs more
  effectively and efficiently.
• THIS includes BEHAVIORAL PATTERNS
• Not the least of which is the creation of
  narratives about causes and consequences.
• Spiritual experiences are unusual states of
  consciousness interpreted to support narratives
  about unseen forces that appear to guide us.

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MEETING NEEDS

• Be all you can be . . .
• (US Army recruiting slogan)
• For most creatures, self-actualization is
  manifest as fitness
• "The aim of life is self-development. To realize
  one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us
  is here for. . . .
• (Oscar Wilde, from The Picture of Dorian Gray)

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MEETING NEEDS

• Meeting NEEDS is the basic business of life.
  When real (or perceived) needs are not met,
  stress is created.
• Organisms have ancient and powerful mechanisms
  for relieving stress
• Needs exist in a hierarchy of urgencies. When
  the most urgent need is met, all the organisms
  energy is focused on the next need.

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DEEP ETHOLOGY

• Physiology
• Proximate causation (how)
• Maintenance of homeostasis the dynamic balance
  of multiple systems
• Negative Positive feedback loops
• Input (e.g., sensation) integration (e.g.,
  cognition, perception, memory) output (motor
  coordination, endocrine activation)

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The mind consists of countless layers of
overlapping, interconnected nets, each sharing
millions of knots called neurons, and deployed to
catch and control whatever experiences will
advance our fitness -- our relative success in
the meeting of needs to survive and thrive. No
single net can catch much of anything of great
use, each catches fragments at best. Art
Organism
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What is the urgent need that is shared by those
who would know their selves

• We need to know the TRUTH
• We are powerfully motivated to develop the
  highest possible confidence in the reality of our
  beliefs . . . and their internal and external
  validity
• TRUTH is an amalgam of reality-testing
  (correspondence) and story-telling (coherence).
  These two separate functions of brain and mind
  converge to give us confidence that empowers our
  actions in the world.

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TRUTH in the BRAIN

• TRUTH is a BELIEF in which you have HIGH
  CONFIDENCE
• CONFIDENCE derives from specific neural functions
  associated with
• AFFECT (sensuous, emotional, empirical,
  experiential, real) and
• REASON (linear, narrative, coherent, ideal)

We can speak of two critical PROBLEMS and our
two coordinated COPING MECHANISMS
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SELF CONSCIOUSNESS

• THE BRAIN "multitasks" --lots of things go on
  simultaneously --and often compete with each
  other for control of behavior. Surely you have
  had almost debilitating episodes of being unable
  to "make up your mind?" There always seems to be
  multiple explanations for phenomena -- which
  shall you select? why that one?
• --Art Organism

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TRUTH in the BRAIN
TRUTH is a quality of a belief we hold in our
heads -- It has met certain tests

1. CORRESPONDENCE our experience of the world
   matches the reality of the world reality
   testing (Novelty evokes stress it is
   anxiogenic it evokes the stress response)
2. COHERENCE our experience fits in with all our
   other experiences story-telling (Familiarity
   mitigates stress it is anxiolytic it relieves
   stress)

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A Mind at Rest . . .

• There are two modes of knowing, through argument
  and experience. Argument brings conclusions and
  compels us to concede them, but does not cause
  certainty nor remove the doubts in order that the
  mind may remain at rest in truth, unless this is
  provided by experience
• --Roger Bacon, 1268 . .

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COHERENCE

• The pieces come together
• A congenital synthesizer, I held onto the dream
  of a unifying theory (p312)
• ". . . the years writing these two syntheses The
  Insect Societies and Sociobiology were among
  the happiest of my life" (p323)
• -- EO Wilson in Naturalist (1994)

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We NEED explanations

• Coherence helps us feel better A world that can
  be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar
  world. But on the other hand, in a universe
  divested of illusions and lights, man feels an
  alien, a stranger. . . .

Albert Camus
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TRUTH in the BRAIN
LEFT HEMISPHERE Coherence creates a stable and
internally consistent belief system (Ramachandran
1998) Probabilistic reasoning (Osherson et al
1998) Abstract object recognition (Marsolek 1999)
RIGHT HEMISPHERE Correspondence tests reality
and if damaged, confabulation runs
rampant (Ramachandran 1998) Deductive
reasoning (Osherson et al 1998) Specific object
recognition (Marsolek 1999)
Kant "The senses cannot think, the
understanding cannot see.
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What is the urgent need that is shared by those
who would know their selves

• SCIENCE and ART are the human endeavors that
  seek truth
• Foster our self-knowledge
• Explore beneath mere appearances
• Exercise and integrate our skills at intuition
  (based on experience and sensory information of
  which we may not be consciously aware) and reason
  (organized coherent matrices of probable causes
  and effects)

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"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the
rational mind is a faithful servant. We have
created a society that honors the servant and has
forgotten the gift. --Albert Einstein
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G????? sea?t??GNOTHI se AUTON

• To be an effective, competitive organism, we
  would be wise to follow the advice of the Oracle
  at Delphi
• Gnothi se auton
• (Know thyself)
• Is this the primal function
• of art? Of science?

the ancient ruins of the sanctuary of
Apollo at Delphi. is spread out over the southern
slopes of Mount Parnassos, beneath the Phaidriad
rocks.
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What are my LIMITS?

• KNOWING who you are is an artifact of cerebral
  mechanisms for helping you maximizing your
  fitness!
• Being ALL YOU CAN BE
• Emotions and cognition, ART and SCIENCE,
  intuition and rationality, senses and reason, are
  ways our minds tell us who we are and exercise
  and extend our boundaries and potential

Vitruvian Man by Leonardo reflects
his conviction that all things can be measured
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• "The senses cannot think.
• The understanding cannot see."
• Immanual Kant
• Critique of Pure Reason

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The Natural History of the Self

• The LIMITS of KNOWLEDGE
• the world is known only in fragments . . .
  a sense of continuity depends upon neural
  mechanisms.
• We have an instinctive conviction in an
  intellectually accessible mechanistic order in
  nature. (AN Whitehead 1967)

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We see the world not as it is, But as we are .
. .
(Talmud)
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What we know of nature is necessarily limited

• Reality is out there . . . truth is in here
• Our umwelt world of senses is limited to what
  our sense organs can detect and we have evolved
  to detect only that which is essential to
  survival to the meeting of our needs.
• One such need is for the connections that create
  stories an understanding of the causes and
  consequences of phenomena
• A predictable world is much less stressful

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The organism imposes limits

• Science seeks (and often succeeds) in
  transcending them We have prosthetic eyes and
  ears . . .
• BUT we live in our unique Umwelt our sensory
  and perceptual world -- for example
• Vision 390-780nm
• Hearing 20-20K Hz

Vitruvian Man by Leonardo reflects
his conviction that all things can be measured
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We see the world not as it is, But as we are .
. .
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We see the world not as it is, But as we are .
. .
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We see the world not as it is, But as we are .
. .
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Causes and Consequences

• "A warp in the simian brain....made us insatiable
  for patterns--patterns of sequence, of behavior,
  of feeling-- connections, reasons, causes
  stories." (Kathryn Morton, 1984)
• . . . the need for a narrative is absolutely
  primal (Oliver Sacks 1987)

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Connections

• The love of system, of interconnection, which is
  perhaps the inmost essence of the intellectual
  impulse . . . (Bertrand Russell, 1917)

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The biologists lensstress

• When our ability to accommodate real or perceived
  needs is threatened, we experience stress Much
  of our behavior is guided by the urge to minimize
  uncontrollable stress.
• Stress evoked for any reason positive as well as
  negative changes we need to accommodate or cope
  with, energizes our systems our perceptions,
  our thinking, our actions.
• Mild stress can be exhilarating, revealing our
  great potential, intense stress can be
  debilitating, even deadly, exhausting our
  resources . . .

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The biologists lensstress is caused by

• Cognitive dissonance (mismatches between our
  minds model of the world (derived from
  correspondence and coherence) and the world as it
  is)
• Incomplete stories (the evidence on which we base
  our understanding is necessarily fragmentary)
• we ameliorate stress by extrapolating from areas
  of confident knowledge to areas of ignorance.
  Our biology does not require us to be perfect
  just sufficient to be competitive and prosper
• Relentless pursuit of (unattainable) perfection
  leads us to being better than our competitors.

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Searching for truth . . . creating connections

• Se hace camino al andar

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Searching for truth . . . creating connections

• We make the road by walking

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• "Our life is an appenticeship to the truth that
  around every circle another can be drawn that
  there is no end in nature, but every end is a
  beginning, and under every deep a lower deep
  opens"
• --Ralph Waldo Emerson

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• "Our life is an appenticeship to the truth that
  around every circle another can be drawn that
  there is no end in nature, but every end is a
  beginning, and under every deep a lower deep
  opens"
• --Ralph Waldo Emerson

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ACTION without INTENTION
IMPULSIVENESS Experience SPONTANEITY

• We are right to wary of IMPULSE (instincts,
  emotions)
• It is impulse control that distinguishes us
  from lower animals

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Impulse control is what the prefrontal cortex is
all about
"The sleep of reason produces monsters"